_Originally posted on [hn]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859637) in response to Who runs the best schools? It might be the Defense Department](https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/schools-pandemic-defense-department.html)

I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near Lexington, MA. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but it hindsight it had lots going for it:

• No such thing as unemployment

• A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) neighborhood

• The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd grade classroom in 1992).

There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your job you’re out of the community. The line between personal problems and professional problems—I came to find out later—is much blurrier than in the “real world”. Also health care is crazy cheap.

I don’t know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn’t.

Neat article though, gets you thinking.